Handcrafting A Legend

“Whatcha’ packing?” I live in the Deep South. I get that question a lot. I reached under my scrubs and carefully extracted my custom-built aluminum-framed 1911 pistol. I dropped the magazine, cleared the gun and handed it butt-first to my buddy. He checked the action himself, pointed the gun at an outside wall and took its measure. He was obviously impressed with the pistol’s modest weight and superlative feel.

“Check out the markings,” I baited shamelessly. But there are no markings. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. The gun is as bare as Lady Godiva out for an evening ride. “How did you get this?” he asked incredulously.

“I used to be a spy,” I lied.

My wife tells me I would be taken more seriously if I would stop intentionally misleading people. It’s indeed true I’ve never technically been a spy. However, I have contrived my own sterile 1911 pistol at home. So long as you build the gun yourself for
personal use, there is no federal legal requirement to put a serial number or identifying markings on it at all. The entire process is just ridiculously cool.

A Bit Of Legal Background

To build a firearm for commercial sale in America requires a fairly onerous license from the government. The paperwork and financial outlay are not insubstantial, and the inspections and subsequent oversight are thorough. However, if you have a clean record and want to build an otherwise legal firearm solely for personal use, you need not even tell Uncle Sam about it. You cannot conjure up a machine gun or thermonuclear bomb, but if you want to make yourself a pistol, then have at it. The rub has been in the past this was a fairly tool-intensive undertaking.

The government establishes the threshold for completion at 80%. This determination is both arbitrary and impossible to quantify accurately. Less than 80% frame blanks can be sold through the mail like any other inert trinket from Amazon. More than 80% finished, and the frame becomes a firearm requiring transfer through a Federal Firearms License holder. In the case of the 1911 frame, BATF has established two criteria.

The simplest of the two involves a frame lacking the frame-rail cuts, barrel-seat machining and hammer and sear pin holes. Where previously it took an expensive milling machine to perform these operations, nowadays the Phantom Jig from Stealth Arms and parts available from 1911 Builders will let you knock these chores out with nothing fancier than a drill press and a shop vise.

Sundry Details

The folks at 1911 Builders offer parts kits for scads of different 1911 pistols. Frames can be had with or without dustcover rails in either aluminum or stainless-steel versions. They sell basic frames in Government, Commander, Officer or double-stack configurations. If you cannot find the type of gun you want on their website, you are just too picky.

There are 17 different combinations by my count. You can craft your own stubby bobtail carry gun or build a full-sized double-stack hand howitzer to keep tucked in your bedside table. All of their parts are top quality, and the satisfaction derived from customizing a gun to fit your unique personality is remarkable. Here’s how it works.

The Stealth Arms Phantom Jig

Every now and again you happen upon some human contrivance that just knocks your socks off. Such is the manifest mechanical virtuosity of the Phantom Jig from Stealth Arms. Wow, but this thing is cool.

The first order of business is to bore the hammer and sear pin holes. The jig clamps rigidly around the frame and locates these two holes perfectly. The instructions included with the device will walk you through the process. Buying a cheap box-store drill press
makes this easy, and you still have a drill press at the end of the exercise. The jig is essentially infinitely reusable.

The Phantom Jig affixes to the unfinished 1911 frame and guides a manually driven carbide cutter to cut the slide rails and barrel seat precisely. First you secure the assembly in a standard shop vise. A sliding shuttle holds the cutter, and an adjustment knob controls the depth. Grasp the handle and slide it along its track so the cutter removes a sliver of material about half the thickness of aluminum foil.

Lubricate the mechanism generously throughout. Turn the knob to lower the cutter by an increment before taking another pass. In short order you have the rails formed as precisely as though they were cut on a mill. The process is a bit time consuming but is not difficult.

I built my 1911 on an aluminum frame. Aluminum is obviously softer than steel and subsequently much easier to cut. The Phantom Jig will cut a steel frame as well, but expect the process to be a bit more onerous.

You then reorient the Phantom Jig to the top of the frame to cut the barrel seat. The same device guides both processes. In this phase the apparatus slides on your newly cut frame rails. I found cutting the barrel seat to be a bit more challenging than the side rails, but not by much. Be thorough and meticulous, and the professional nature of the results will amaze you.

My daughter and I finished out our aluminum 1911 frame in an afternoon. I used my shopworn drill press for the hammer and sear holes. I crafted the three frame cuts using nothing more than the Phantom Jig and a shop vise bolted to my workbench. It was all
surprisingly easy.

Like most mechanical things, the limiting factor is patience. Cut gently and check the fit regularly. Taking material away is easy. Putting it back is hard. The end result is as professional as it would be from a respected factory.

Assembling A 1911 Pistol

Assembling the 1911 pistol is involved, but not terribly difficult. The internet is awash in helpful tutorials, and YouTube will let you watch other people do it well. You’ll need a punch or three, a small non-marring hammer and some basic tools to go along with a smidgeon of institutional knowledge. We used a set of building fixtures from Present Arms, which kept everything going smoothly.

The Present Arms fixtures are milled from a robust non-marring polymer. They are designed to keep everything in place and provide the third hand you need to get through some of the difficult bits. The build can be undertaken without this device, but the Present Arms fixtures make the process easier.

The internal mechanism is intuitive so long as you have some familiarity with it. Read up on the details or check out YouTube before you get started. You’ll also need to drill a 1/8″ hole to retain the ejector, but this chore is painless with a drill press.

Compressing the hammer spring into its housing is undeniably onerous. However, you can use the vise to hold the assembly in place while you fret with it. We placed a small ball bearing over the top when compressing the spring to push the plunger low enough to get the cross pin started. Wear safety glasses lest this powerful spring slips its bonds. A cool eye patch might help you get dates, but you would inevitably lament the loss of your depth perception.

You’ll need to provide your own sights, and we opted for the TRUGLO TFX sort. TFX stands for Tritium Fiber-Optic Extreme. These reasonably priced aftermarket sights will maximize the effectiveness of your new handheld howitzer.

Fiber optic inserts funnel light to where you need it under daylight conditions. Radioactive Swiss-made Tritium inserts illuminate the same fiber optic tubes in the dark. These steel sights are all but indestructible and greatly enhance the effectiveness of most any tactical handgun, whether it’s built at home or bought in a store.

Tweaking The Details

The slide-to-frame fit feels like greased glass, and the crisp single-action trigger is simply divine. I had to buff the safety a smidge with my Dremel tool to get it to fit, but everything else was plug and play. There are a lot of really capable artisans out there customizing 1911 pistols. With 1911 Builders you can taste some of the same sweetness yourself at home. Building this gun from scratch gave me a familiarity with its entrails I never could have appreciated otherwise.

The back of the slide overhung the frame by just a bit when everything was done. I could have left this in place without adversely affecting function, but the aesthetics would have just eaten at me. I gently laid the back of the completed slide against my bench
grinder to true it up, and then polished the rough spots with my Dremel tool. The unique geometry gives my home built gun a little character.

I found some black skeletonized grips through an online auction which perfectly complement the racy silver of the base gun. Check out the pictures. Even Chuck Schumer would think this gun looked cool.

Light It Up

Despite the fact I built this thing from a pile of parts, function and lockup were tight from the get-go. Reliability was 100% with three different brands of ammunition and the gun shot beautifully straight. Maintenance is a snap once you literally know every single piece of the gun inside and out.

The resulting pistol is light enough for concealed carry and accepts any standard accessory on its railed dustcover. The slide/frame interface is stainless steel on aluminum so keep the gun lubed well with quality gun oil until it breaks in to prevent any galling of the rail surfaces. I was blown away how well this home-built pistol looked and shot.

The manual of arms is foundational dogma for most American gun nerds. Magazines drop away cleanly, and the controls are crisp and positive. The responsive single-action trigger sets the standard for everything else.

Ruminations

It does indeed require a little mechanical aptitude to pull this project off. However, a polished end result really is more a function of patience than skill. Take your time and don’t rush anything. This build is well within the reach of anyone even
reasonably handy with tools.

You do need a small drill press, but not for long. You can borrow somebody else’s or just buy a cheap one: Amazon has one for $75 with free shipping. A drill press takes up very little shop space, and you’ll use it for lots of other stuff eventually.

Legally building a sterile firearm with no markings or serial number adds mystique to any collection. The gun actually shoots as well as a high-end 1911. The total price, including the Phantom Jig, is comparable to a mid-range commercial 1911 pistol. You could even get together with a few like-minded friends and share a jig.

There are no federal restrictions on building one of these guns at home for personal use, though local laws may adversely impact the project. If you live in a free state, there is immense satisfaction in conjuring, shooting and carrying a top-flight 1911 you crafted at home. You don’t even have to be a spy to build one.

For more info:
www.1911builders.com
www.stealtharms.net
www.presentarmsinc.com
www.truglo.com

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